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No past. No family. No stories.

Just walls.

And he’d been too damn distracted by breaking through them to notice how high they really were.

*

“Fuck him,” she muttered, storming back into her apartment.

Well, not really her apartment anymore.

It had cost her to break the lease. The landlord hadn’t cared about circumstances. About death. About upheaval. About anything beyond the contract. Unsympathetic bastard. “Fuck him, too.”

She grabbed the suitcases and dragged them toward the door, wheels rattling over the threshold. The last of her belongings.

She lived unencumbered.

No ties. No weight.

Ready to walk at a moment’s notice.

But not anymore.

Now she had a house.

And dogs.

Fucking dogs.

Responsibilities.

The word sat heavy in her chest, sour and unwelcome.

She sucked at responsibilities.

Let people down.

Left them behind.

She hauled the cases down the stairs, muscles straining, breath coming shorter with each step. The weight wasn’t just physical — it pressed in from the inside, tight and suffocating.

At the bottom, she shoved them into the back of the Bronco harder than necessary.

A house.

Dogs.

Ties.

The exact things she had no business having.

Because soon she’d trade her badge for prison bars.

Or a grave.

21

Tethers